The trip that lit the fuse​

Twenty one horses...

It all started with Twenty one horses.

Words by: Johnny Bang

What’s in a name?

I probably should explain the name - 3 postie bikes (Honda CT110’s) making 7 horsepower each. I guess the point we want to make is that you don’t need a big bike for a big adventure. To put 7 HP in context, a modern ride-on mower makes 15 HP. So that’s where this all starts - a few years back, cruising the coast on what is essentially a bicycle with a lawnmower engine. Killing it.

The 1%ers

So we had the bikes. Check. What’s next? A bikie gang was the obvious choice. So we founded the SPC, or the Sunshine Post Crew, where we would hide from our lives/wives one arvo every week and share fantastic stories about outrageous feats achieved on our steads (radical jumps, stealth passing, 100km/hr downhill top speed runs, the time I overtook a Harley etc…).

The trip that lit the fuse

Bikie Gang. Check. What’s next? Real adventure. It was at one of those (yet to be outlawed) gang meetings that Dan mentioned he wanted to ride the Strzelecki Track on a postie. I didn’t know too much about the Strezlecki Track except that is was in one of the most isolated and unforgiving areas of Australia (near the South Australian, NSW and QLD borders). But more importantly, I knew my older brother had just completed a similar trip on his ‘proper’ Honda XR600 adventure bike and in my head I was already banking the gnarly street cred I would earn should I replicate a similar feat on my Honda step-though.

Unpreparedness promotes adventure

So a few weeks later I was enjoying another beer with Dan and Ian (this time 800km away at the Cunnamulla Pub), getting excited about tomorrow when the tarmac stops. Here I should say that you can plan a trip to much... Luckily I was not guilty of any over such planning. See, I like adventure riding to be free and unplanned - I have always found travel to be more fun and organic this way. In this instance I had taken this strategy of ‘unpreparedness promotes adventure’ to other areas of the trip including bike preparation and supplies (none). The bike was stock and my food plan was just to eat heaps whenever we see a town - hopefully enough to sustain myself until the next town.

A close call

To me the real trip started the day after we left Innamincka. The preceding night Dan had nearly gotten me killed and I left camp in the morning somewhat amused that my risk assessment (bike accident, road trains, snake bike, bike failure, starvation etc…) didn’t include my cousin getting me into a bar brawl in the carpark of an outback pub… Violence (narrowly) avoided, we departed at sparrows-fart to head west and journey to our countries heart.

Sand Stage

Before too long we were on proper, sandy 4x4 tracks – and I mean deep, soft, powder sand. On a ‘real’ bike the technique for sand is to keep the throttle open, keep the weight off the front and keep momentum up - letting the rear wheel do all the work. The postie technique was a bit more frantic – hitting the soft sand as fast as you possibly can, smashing down through the gears as you quickly lose momentum, and jumping off and pushing as momentum dissipates.

We did this all morning, in full riding gear, in the desert, in 42 degree heat. We made 40km’s in 4 hours. Our daily target was 400km. luckily over lunch we consulted our GPS and realised we weren’t actually on a marked road. Whoops. No other option but to back-track to something resembling a road.

Luckily things picked up and the afternoon was probably one of the funniest rides of the trip – tight, technical sections opening into flowing whoop sections that really worked the bikes hard (and we didn’t hold back). We traded positions all day – one of the best things about the postie is you can ride it at 100% all day, and as we were all on the same bike we had some great battles. The roads gradually improved and we rode late into the night to make-up for time lost that morning.

Clutchless

The next revealed my clutch was fried – probably as a result of the sand thrashing. I attempted to drive around it, but it was frustrating not being able to keep up with the slipstream of the other two bikes. We changed the clutch that night. It appeared to be the original clutch which put in a fair effort to get 24,000kms! Nice work postie.

Corner Country

A few days of riding saw us pass through Cameron Corner (the intersection of QLD, NSW & SA), visit the Dingo fence, pass through Lyndhurst and drop in at Maree – riding all day and camping rough in the bush at night.

Postie bikes and sail boats have a lot in common

The first thing we did every morning was check wind speed and direction. See; on a postie bike the difference between a good headwind or tailwind is the difference between spending a day doing 60km/h or 90km/h and there is no hiding from the wind on these wide dusty plains. We were generally lucky but we all dreaded the terrible ‘headwind days’ (Mental note – research mods to the postie so it has enough spice to drive into a headwind).

Lake Eyre

The ride to Lake Eyre was a mix of spine-compressing corrugations and sneaky sandy sections that tried to catch us by surprise. The throttle was pinned the whole way regardless - we were all looking forward to some high-speed racing on the salt flats viva ‘The World’s Fastest Indian’.

The salt plains had other plans – and we were greeted with a thin salt crust that quickly gave way to thick, sticky mud that grabbed the bikes and pulled us in like flypaper. After some reconnaissance missions for some thicker salt we gave up and headed back.

On our ride back we saw a lone figure in the distance desperately trying to grab our attention. I figured that maybe we weren’t meant to be riding on this part of the lake and made a hasty retreat. A few hours later while we were regrouping in the carpark the same figure called us a few choice words while explaining he had been hiking on the salt pan all day, was out of water, was desperately dehydrated and was trying to catch a ride. Whoops. Oh well, at least it was nice to meet another proponent of the Unpreparedness promotes adventure mantra (Mental note - find a better mantra). Open Heart Surgery in the Desert

On the way back from the Lake Dan’s bike was losing timing. After re-setting it twice we knew there were foul things afoot and the little engine was opened up. An hour later and after some precision hammering with a punch to bind a slipping spline we were back on the road. It was the kind of problem that would have paralysed any of the bigger adventure bikes so once again we were happy with our choice of ‘lawnmower powered’ bikes. The fix still holds to this day (I love fixing things with hammers).

The Birdsville Track & Cooper Creek The Birdsville track was in great condition and we reached some of the fastest speeds of trip with a combination of slipstreaming, body position and road gradient. A top speed of 97Km/h doesn’t sound like much, but when you’re doing it on a postie bike 200mm shy of your mate in front with your head between your knees (to reduce wind resistance), it feels like warp speed. Time genuinely slowed.

Big Red The next day was devoted to getting all our bikes to the top of ‘Big Red’, the famous sand dune on the Simpson Desert. I can’t say it was elegant (refer to sand technique above – speed, speed, downshift, run beside bike), but who cares? How many people have had a postie on the top of Big Red? We watched a few 4x4’s make the crossing over the dune (none on the ‘big hill’ that we had conquered) and left in search of cold beers.

Birdsville Races (almost) The Birdsville Races is one of the best parties in the Outback and maybe even Australia. The horse races are a hot, dusty, affair that attracts visitors from all over the Australia to drink and party. In reality I think the horses are just an enabler- in much the same way the cups and ping pong balls work for beer pong. I have always wanted to go the Birdsville Races – it has been a lifelong dream. Unfortunately for me we were now a week late and had missed the races completely. Oh well, the pub was open, the beer was cold and now we have an excuse to return another year. You don’t need a lot to do a lot Point Proven. This trip for me was about proving that you don’t need a big adventure bike to have a big adventure. When I watched ‘Long Way Round’ one scene that stood out to me was Ewen Mcgregor dropping his bike before they even left London, and the bike being so heavy and full of gear that he needed 3 people to pick it up. I reckon I could do it better on a small bike. … I wonder if I could ride a small bike around the world?...